Church spruiks cafe society to spread the word

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The Anglican Diocese of Sydney wants to raise $500 million to convert Sydney.

Archbishop Peter Jensen said the initiative, called the New Capital Project, would involve buying land, building churches, renovating the Moore Theological College, churches and other buildings and employing more workers.

In the first stage of the project, the diocese will assess the worth of its assets, which the Archbishop estimates to be between $3 billion and $4 billion.

The church authorities will decide if they can use those assets to raise between $100 million and $500 million.

"We're looking at what we have and saying, is there any way we can develop these assets to raise capital?" he said.

The diocesan synod resolved in 2002 to aim to have at least 10 per cent of the region of the diocese in "Bible-based" churches in 10 years.

Dr Jensen said growth was already occurring, with up to 70 new congregations, fellowships or churches having sprung up since the start of the mission strategy.

The diocese, which goes north to the Hawkesbury River, south to Milton and into the Southern Highlands and west to Lithgow, is bucking the trend of attendance patterns.

National Church Life Survey statistics show an increase in attendance to churches in the Sydney diocese of 9 per cent between 1996 and 2001, compared with a nationwide decline of 2 per cent in the same period.

Dr Jensen said the diocese had been trying to make church services more attractive to the public by making them less formal and as friendly as possible.

"If people's vision of church is a pretty formal, cold sort of thing, that's not the modern church at all," he said.

At Leichhardt, All Souls Anglican Church is expanding to include a cafe-style space in response to the mission, during which it has doubled attendances.

Archdeacon Deryck Howell said parishioners were keen to make All Souls as well-known to the community as possible and was building a cafe area next to the church where morning tea and supper could be served after church, and where church events, outreach activities and playgroups could be held.

"They're really keen to share their communal life with the community at large," he said.

The building, which will cost between $300,000 and $400,000, has been paid for by income generated from a neighbouring property.

St Stephens at Kellyville has already moved to the less formal, cafe-style way of ministering.

At the parish's new church, opened in August last year and built to cater for an expected growth in the church, there is a cafe area that can hold up to 200 people, the rector of the church,Reverend Ross Hathway said.

That is separate from the auditorium, which can hold up to 400.

He said: "Already in the cafe area we're running discussion groups for folk who want to investigate the Christian faith in an informal, non-threatening, anything-goes manner."